Contardo Ferrini

Contardo Ferrini (1859 to 1902) was an Italian jurist and legal scholar, internationally recognized as an expert in Roman and Byzantine law, who was also a devout Roman Catholic and Franciscan tertiary and has been beatified by the Catholic Church. Born in Milan, he entered the University of Pavia at seventeen and became a doctor of law at twenty-one with a thesis relating penal law to Homeric poetry, which won him a scholarship to Berlin. He lectured at Messina, Modena and Pavia, received his first professorship at twenty-six, taught for a time in Paris and later became a canon lawyer as well as a civil lawyer. His works, among them Diritto penale romano and the Manuale di Pandette, are considered a milestone in Roman law historiography, and Theodor Mommsen is reported to have said that research primacy in Roman law had passed from Germany to Italy through his labours. He died of typhus at Suna in 1902 and was beatified in 1947.